Medieval and Renaissance England

Baptism of The Bard

There´s been a lot about Shakespeare of this blog the past week, and I promise that tis will be the last post about him for a while. But it was on this day he was baptized. While there has been celebrations of his birthday on the same day as he died, on April 23, fact is that no one know for a fact when he was born.

The notion that he was born and died on the same day, which also happens to be St. George´s Day didn´t become popular until after his death in 1616.
But we do know that he was brought to Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon on this day. As that by the necessity of the time – high infant mortality and a preoccupation of making the best arrangements possible for the afterlife, he was most likely baptized just a few days after his birth.

So if not on the actual St. George´s Day, the Great Bard was born sometime around the 26th of April.